NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The CPANPLUS
library is an API to the CPAN
mirrors and a
collection of interactive shells, commandline programs, etc,
that use this API.

GUIDE TO DOCUMENTATION

GENERAL USAGE

This is the document you are currently reading. It describes
basic usage and background information. Its main purpose is to
assist the user who wants to learn how to invoke CPANPLUS
and install modules from the commandline and to point you
to more indepth reading if required.

API REFERENCE

The CPANPLUS
API is meant to let you programmatically
interact with the CPAN
mirrors. The documentation in
CPANPLUS::Backend shows you how to create an object
capable of interacting with those mirrors, letting you
create & retrieve module objects.
CPANPLUS::Module shows you how you can use these module
objects to perform actions like installing and testing.

The default shell, documented in CPANPLUS::Shell::Default
is also scriptable. You can use its API to dispatch calls
from your script to the CPANPLUS Shell.

COMMANDLINE TOOLS

STARTING AN INTERACTIVE SHELL

You can start an interactive shell by running either of
the two following commands:

$ cpanp

$ perl -MCPANPLUS -eshell

All commands available are listed in the interactive shells
help menu. See cpanp -h
or CPANPLUS::Shell::Default
for instructions on using the default shell.

CHOOSE A SHELL

By running cpanp
without arguments, you will start up
the shell specified in your config, which defaults to
CPANPLUS::Shell::Default. There are more shells available.
CPANPLUS
itself ships with an emulation shell called
CPANPLUS::Shell::Classic that looks and feels just like
the old CPAN.pm
shell.

You can start this shell by typing:

$ perl -MCPANPLUS -e'shell Classic'

Even more shells may be available from CPAN
.

Note that if you have changed your default shell in your
configuration, that shell will be used instead. If for
some reason there was an error with your specified shell,
you will be given the default shell.

BUILDING PACKAGES

cpan2dist
is a commandline tool to convert any distribution
from CPAN
into a package in the format of your choice, like
for example .deb or FreeBSDports
.

See cpan2dist -h
for details.

FUNCTIONS

For quick access to common commands, you may use this module,
CPANPLUS
rather than the full programmatic API situated in
CPANPLUS::Backend
. This module offers the following functions:

$bool = install( Module::Name | /A/AU/AUTHOR/Module-Name-1.tgz )

This function requires the full name of the module, which is case
sensitive. The module name can also be provided as a fully
qualified file name, beginning with a /, relative to
the /authors/id directory on a CPAN mirror.

It will download, extract and install the module.

$where = fetch( Module::Name | /A/AU/AUTHOR/Module-Name-1.tgz )

Like install, fetch needs the full name of a module or the fully
qualified file name, and is case sensitive.

It will download the specified module to the current directory.

$where = get( Module::Name | /A/AU/AUTHOR/Module-Name-1.tgz )

Get is provided as an alias for fetch for compatibility with
CPAN.pm.

shell()

Shell starts the default CPAN shell. You can also start the shell
by using the cpanp
command, which will be installed in your
perl bin.